


Everything's Alright

by etumologie



Category: To The Moon (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Not canon compliant?, essentially a character study masquerading as a story because I can't write plot for the life of me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 20:04:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14433084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etumologie/pseuds/etumologie
Summary: During the after, Eva Rosalene reflects on her relationship with Neil Watts.





	Everything's Alright

**Author's Note:**

> I just finished playing To the Moon this week and promptly fell down the rabbit hole of fan art/fan fiction for this lovely game. This is my take on the relationship between Eva and Neil. I hope you enjoy!

It’s not a beautiful tragedy, she thinks, because beautiful tragedies are only for the naїve and the romantics. It’s just life, and they’re just human.

It was very human, the way they never talked about anything important and never said what they meant until there was nothing left to say anymore.

It was very human, the way he concealed his true feelings underneath a shimmering mirage of nerdy references and clever retorts.

It was very human, the way she chose to dismiss and ignore the signs that implied otherwise.

Yes, everything was so painfully, quintessentially human, a story that had played out a hundred thousand times before in a hundred thousand different ways. They were just the most recent variation on the theme. She understood this rationally. And yet, it _felt_ different because it had happened to her…

They were just two people attempting to provide each other comfort without cutting themselves on each other’s jagged edges. It wasn’t that they fit together like puzzle pieces, they hadn’t been fated by any means–they could hardly get along half the time and their story could have diverged a hundred different ways. And it wasn’t that they completed each other, at the end of the day they had to stand on their own two feet and–well.

But it went like this. During quiet moments after a failed job or just a particularly emotionally taxing one, he would fold her into his arms, stroking her hair and murmuring words of comfort or humming a tune. He was a talented singer, even if she had been too proud to admit that to him herself. He would then, unprompted, brew her a warm mug of tea and dial down on the jabs,

It was the way she wouldn’t even think twice about defending him against anyone who had an untoward word to say about him,

It was the way their eyes would meet in a moment of mirth sharing the ludicrousness of what they witnessed on the job,

And everything else in between.

She wonders if she ever really knew him at all. She thinks she had an idea, but it was formulated more out of feeling than logic. For all that he had done for her, she wonders why he wouldn’t let her, or anyone for that matter, love him. She wonders why she hadn’t tried harder, why she had let things like the fact that they worked together get in the way. And now, the big question mark that had hung over them, the golden gossamer web of possibility between them–sometimes waxing, sometimes waning–would remain just that, a possibility.

But she was grateful to have known him. She had heard a song the other day on the radio that had wrest her attention from the mundane process of making a rather unflavorful stew. The line that had caught her ear? “And I knew that you were truth I would rather lose than to have never lain beside at all.” And he was.

She was grateful for his company, for his humor, for his wit. But more than anything else, she was grateful for the comfort he had provided her. She remembers how hard she had taken the first failures, the way he had alternated between cajoling her with soothing whispers of it’s going to be okay and scolding her that he knew she was stronger than this. She remembers how he had slowly instilled into her over the years the sense that no matter what happened, she would be okay. And she was grateful. 

So it was strange, really, to know now that she was going to be okay in the end but to be stuck in the midst of the process of the becoming okay. But she was.

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone who is curious, the song Eva "hears" is What Sarah Said by Death Cab for Cutie. While not necessarily a perfect parallel to this work, it's a beautiful song that everyone should take a chance on if they'd like!


End file.
